One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Our
retrospective of Ark II comes to an end with this fifteenth and final episode, “Orkus.”

Interestingly,
“Orkus” is an episode that feels more like an installment of Logan’s
Run: The Series (1977) or The Fantastic Journey (1977) than
one from the Filmation series’ own catalog. It’s very much in the nature of a 1970s,
prime-time “civilization of the week”
tale.

Here,
the Ark II team stops for repairs and investigates reports of pollution. Unfortunately, Ruth and Adam fall prey to
that pollution, and deadly toxins super-age them in a matter of moments. Unless an antidote can be developed, Ruth and
Adam will die of old age in mere hours.

Then,
out of the blue, an imperious man named Orkus (Geoffrey Lewis) utilizes his
high-tech powers to hijack the Ark and seize control of it. Jonah matches wits with this duplicitous leader
of a Utopian community ensconced behind a protective force field, and tries to
free the Ark and save his friends.

Orkus
is virtually immortal, Jonah learns, and made so by his society’s
super-computer, called “The Provider.”
Furthermore, Orkus requires Ark II’s power source to continue protecting
his own people and city from the atmospheric pollution. “We can
only save ourselves,” he insists.
Also, as Jonah learns, Orkus and his people are actually responsible for
the pollution in the first place.

Now
Jonah must not only apply a cure for Ruth and Adam, but destroy the source of
pollution, and transform Orkus’s society to one of more human dimensions. Fortunately, he gets help from some of Orkus’s
more independent-minded followers…

“Orkus”
is a more hard-edged Ark II segment than some, albeit one
with many familiar ingredients from 1960s and 1970s cult television. There’s the super computer that governs a
stagnant society (“Return of the Archons,” “Guardian of Piri,” Logan’s Run, “Turnabout”)
and a disease that causes extreme, instantaneous old age (“The Deadly Years.”)

In
the end, order and “normal development” are restored, as immortality is
destroyed (“The Apple,” “Guardian of Piri”), and something more “human” replaces
it. It’s not a particularly original
episode, but it is fascinating to see the Ark II crew pitted against a
dyed-in-the-wool liar and “black hat” like Orkus, for a change; especially with
crewmembers imperiled and on the verge of death.

With
this episode, our retrospective of Ark II is complete. The series’ strongest points remain the
technology and production design, in my opinion. The vehicles, sets, props and uniforms are
all genuinely impressive, even today.

Less
impressive is the kind of loose-minded, indistinct “background” detail underlying
the post-apocalyptic world of Ark II’s future. In Star Trek, episode wrap-ups would frequently
see Captain Kirk noting in a log that Federation advisors, teachers or helpers
were on the way to help a planet changed by the Enterprise’s visit. Ark II could have used some of that specificity,
particularly since Jonah and his people are trying to rebuild a world, and that
agenda requires more than a cursory one-off visit to troubled villages and
towns.

Yet
the missions undertaken by Jonah and his crew are generally pretty
loosely-structured, and there’s very little sense of follow-up or persistence. Many episodes involve the idea that bad
actors and evil-doers, once confronted with their anti-social behavior, will
see the error of their ways and do right.
That is not a strong enough basis upon which to re-build a ruined world
in my opinion.

The series should have
featured, at some point, back-up personnel helping to smooth transitions and
usher in the positive changes first initiated by Jonah and his team. Also, I would have found it fascinating to
feature a story in which Jonah and the others run across a villain who won’t back
down, but only doubles-down, thus forcing them to confront their “non-aggressive”
mission strategy and actively fight. In
other words, I would have liked to have seen a stronger test of the
protagonists’ values. I must confess: this
is the very thing that bothers me the most about Star Trek: The Next Generation.
It’s easy to preach noble values when you live in paradise; when you have a
full stomach and the time to “enrich” yourself educationally and
otherwise. But what happens when you don’t
live in paradise? Then what?

Because
of the series format, the Ark II team often overmatches the
bad guys. The vehicle’s crew has
science, technology, knowledge and force fields on their side. Accordingly, many episodes do not feature an
adequate or deep sense of menace. Thus
the episodes that I remember best are those, like “Orkus,” which present a real
challenge. Other examples are episodes
such as “Omega” (about a mind-controlling computer), “The Cryogenic Man” (about
an entitled 20th century businessman) and “The Lottery,” which
features a kind of “phantom zone” pocket universe where a tyrant banishes
enemies.

Another highlight of the series is the episode
“The Robot,” which features Robby the Robot as a learning machine, and includes
an abundance of colorful character interaction.

Every
Ark
II episode carries a message about morality, and some adults may find
this aspect of the series tiresome. But
if you remember the program’s original context – as a Saturday morning show for children – the didacticism is easily
understandable. I don’t have any problem
with the moral framework of the series, and feel it’s an excellent program for kids
to watch since it meditates on ideas about how best to “build” a better tomorrow.

I
know we’ve had a big discussion about remakes here on the blog recently, but I
can’t help but feel that an adult-oriented Ark II would be a great subject for
remaking today. This is a “sci fi” world
that could certainly stand some deepening and maturity, but which is already
interesting and unique enough to merit interest from audiences.

The
problem, of course, is that probably not enough people remember the series in
the first place.

Friday, August 17, 2012

It
used to be, in some circles, anyway, that if you announced you were a lover of
French films, people would assume you were some kind of “elite” with a "snobby" superiority complex. But “The New French
Extremity” movement in that nation's cinema has, perhaps, altered this perception to some
degree. Grotesque, visceral films such
as High
Tension (2003), Them (2006), Martyrs (2008) andIrreversible
(2002) are all decorum-shattering, convention-busting, transgressive works-of-art and
legitimate heirs to the Savage American Cinema of the 1970s.

So
when people ask me about the future of the horror film, I tell them: look to
France.

Today’s
“Savage Friday” film is Irreversible, an absolutely
uncompromising, ultra-violent French film from director Gasper Noe that, like the best of the Savage
Cinema, depicts disturbing imagery for a
pro-social reason, in this case to forge an argument about human nature, about violence, and about the way that we view our world.

In
a sense, Irreversible is a rape-and-revenge film in the spirit of I
Spit on Your Grave (1978). But the tenets of the genre are deconstructed so thoroughly that -- by our sense of the viewing experience -- cause no longer
precedes effect; and therefore, importantly, rape no longer precedes revenge. Specifically, Irreversible crafts its disturbing tale in a manner that we would term “backwards,” starting off with the
fall-out of bloody, murderous revenge and working back, chronologically-speaking, to the brutal rape, and, at film’s end, to the peaceful days before that violent assault.

On
first blush, this “backwards” approach to storytelling seems like a stylish gimmick. But Irreversible is anything but
gimmicky. Instead, the film’s oddball approach to structure distills the
narrative down to basic human truths about the nature of existence. The movie reveals, specifically, how our
actions are all universes unto themselves, separated, in essence, from the
complicated chain of motivations and reactions we rely upon for "interpretation" because we experience
time in a linear fashion.

Because
cause and effect become thoroughly untethered here, Irreversible’s structure reveals
to the audience who the people involved really are, rather than the characters’
self-images, or their visions of who
they are. Actions become paramount; motivations for those actions become secondary.

In a way, then, Irreversible
represents a God’s eye view of human life here on Earth. Each and every act is a moral universe unto itself. We are judged not by "why" we do something, but the fact that we do it at all.

As
a responsible reviewer, I must note for the record that the on-screen violence
in
Irreversible treads far beyond what most viewers would consider
mainstream or acceptable. One scene
early in the film (though late, chronologically-speaking…) finds a man literally
pulping another man’s face with a fire extinguisher. This horrific on-screen bludgeoning goes on and on and on,
beyond reason, beyond mercy, and beyond the parameters of good taste or typical
cinematic standards. We watch for what
seems like a horribly long time as the victim’s bruised facial structure shatters and crumbles before our very eyes. The term "unflinching" doesn't begin to accurately get at the blunt brutality of this moment.

The
film’s central rape is similarly disturbing because it goes on for merciless duration, for a span approaching ten minutes. The actual rape scene in The Last House on the Left
(1972) went on for scarcely a minute by comparison. In Irreversible, the extended rape
sequence is followed by yet another brutal beating, one every bit as monstrous and
upsetting as the fire extinguisher murder.

And
yet, despite these absolutely uncompromising moments of extreme violence, there’s
something oddly and unexpectedly cathartic -- and perhaps even transcendent -- about Irreversible. This apotheosis is expressed, in part, by the prominent placement for a poster of 2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968) in the background of one composition. That poster features a vision of 2001's “Star
Child,” and a tag-line that describes the Kubrick landmark as the “The Ultimate
Trip.”

In some counter-intuitive fashion, Irreversible lives up to Kubrick's tag-line descriptor, and the horror film's final, strobe-like montage serve as our trip through the “star gate” of human existence...and time. The film’s opening and closing thought is that “Time Destroys Everything,” a declaration which can easily be counted as
a negative or pessimistic conclusion, but I suggest an alternate interpretation. If you gaze deeply intoIrreversible’s unique chemistry, the point
instead seems to be that it is actually our (linear) perception of time that destroys everything,
and that if we attempt to countenance reality in another, non-chronological fashion, all
moments will exist simultaneously. Thus there should be no fear or dread about
life and death, creation and destruction.
All such things exist side-by-side, instant to instant, if only we register
them. And if we can boast this awareness outside the moment-to-moment continuity of our lives -- if we can simultaneously see our endings and our beginnings -- wouldn't we also choose, consciously, to be better to one another?

“Blood
calls for revenge. Vengeance is a human
right.”

Told
in chronological order, Irreversible’s story goes something
like this: A young man, Marcus (Vincent
Cassel) and his girlfriend, Alex (Monica Bellucci) are deeply in love, and
enjoy an afternoon together in bed. That
night, they are going with Alex’s former boyfriend, Pierre (Albert Dupontel) to
a party. Alex reveals she may be
pregnant, and after Marcus leaves the apartment for a time, she confirms this fact
with a pregnancy test. She is happy.

Because
Pierre’s car is broken, the trio takes the subway to the party. On the way, Alex reveals she has been reading a book called
An
Experiment with Time by John Dunne, one that discusses non-linear time. The triumvirate also discuss sex, and in particular,
Pierre’s inability to help Alex achieve climax during lovemaking. She doesn’t experience this problem
with the more macho, less sensitive Marcus, and Alex suggests that it is
because Pierre is too much the cerebral intellectual.
He’s worried about making her climax, when he should just be thinking instead about seeking his own pleasure. He can’t do, she says, only think.

At
the party, however, Marcus thinks about his own pleasure too much, and indulges in drug use and other bad boy behaviors, angering and alienating Alex.
She leaves the party alone, and decides to take an underpass to escape
the traffic of a busy avenue. In the
dark red under-pass, however, Alex is viciously assaulted, raped, and beaten by a thug called Le Tenia (Jo Prestia).

Pierre
and Marcus see a bloodied, bruised Alex being taken to the hospital, and Marcus swears revenge. They go together in search of a gay club called
Rectum that Le Tenia is known to frequent.
Marcus enters the club, spoiling for a fight, but is nearly raped
himself. Acting, not thinking, Pierre
defends Marcus, but bludgeons the wrong man to death with a fire extinguisher. Pierre and Marcus are arrested, and , finally, we listen in on a conversation between two strangers in an apartment above the club. They declare that time destroys all.

“I’ve
been reading the most amazing book…It says that the future is already written. It’s all there. And the proof lies in premonitory dreams.”

The
key to a deep understanding and appreciation of Irreversible rests with
the book that Alex describes in one scene, An Experiment with Time by J.W.
Dunne (1875 – 1949). Published in 1927
originally, this book deals with the concept of non-linear time. Specifically, Dunne believed that all moments
are occurring simultaneously, side-by-side. Alas, humans are not capable of seeing or detecting non-linear time, and therefore
only experience flashes of insight -- deja-vu
or precognition -- and only through the auspices of dream analysis. To describe this idea another
way, the world of dreams allows us to detect, outside of waking consciousness,
the future and the past, or the beginning and the end of everything. It's all there, for us to see, but most of the time, we simply can't see it.

Your first key to Irreversible.

In the film, we learn that Alex is reading
Dunne’s text, and we actually see her reading the book in the film’s final (earliest,
chronologically-speaking…) sequence. Alex also reports that she has experienced a
premonitory dream, one in which she is trapped inside a “red room” and that something
is torn asunder there. That red room is
pretty clearly the red underpass where she is raped, and what is torn asunder
(or in two) could be Alex’s very life, her new baby, or maybe even Alex’s sense
of blissful happiness. Perhaps what is
torn asunder is actually all-of-the-above. She and Marcus will be torn asunder, for instance, by her wounds (if she dies), and by his presumed incarceration if he is sent to prison.

What
Irreversible asks us to understand, finally, is that, since every moment exists simultaneously, side-by-side, all of time is pre-ordained, in some sense, from
the Big Bang to the End of the Universe itself. Given this fact -- the birth and death of everything, side by
side -- why would we as creatures with detectable and definable ends (mortality) intentionally inflict hurt and pain on one another?

If our very births and our deaths, our sadness and our happiness, co-exist right now, and we
can detect these moments through precognition, why should we choose to be bad to one another? Why do we, in the words of Pierre behave “like an animal.” “Even
animals,” he insists, “don’t seek
revenge.” And yet, Pierre, finally,
is the one who succumbs to violence and bludgeons the wrong man to
death. This brutality and like of analysis seems to run counter to his
character as he understands it (a man who can’t stop thinking long enough to
act on impulse), and reveals his true nature as, indeed, impulsive and
savage. Can Pierre blame his bloody behavior on Alex's rape? Or is it a crucial part of his gestalt, of his very soul?

Another
scene in Irreversible features two men sitting together in a squalid apartment
(over the Rectum...*ahem*), discussing the vicissitudes of life and the things they have done “wrong.” One man confesses a grotesque crime, and the
other man soothes him by establishing that there are “no bad deeds…just deeds.”
This fact is true only if all moments exist simultaneously, and are not
bound by time’s arrow, or time’s direction; if cause does not precede
effect. Instead, each act – bad deed or good deed – becomes an
expression of a kind of eternal, essential
“self,” independent of causality and motivation. Violence is not a response to action, but an acting out of an essential quality of the soul itself.

Late
in Irreversible,
one character also states “you want to explain everything, but you can’t.” This comment is an admission, I submit, that
people don't always know why they act poorly, or violently, against other people. Instead, if the universe is pre-ordained and
unalterable -- or irreversible – then
there is no easily understandable reason why horrible things occur, except that it’s
the way of life itself. Some people have
viewed the film as anti-gay, for instance, because the brutal rapist, Le Tenia,
frequents a very rough gay club. Why
would an ostensibly gay man rape a woman?
Why does his act make any sense at all? Well, to quote the film, you want to explain
everything, but you can’t. The act was
pre-ordained. It was destiny that Le Tenia
and Alex would end up in that red tunnel together, and that he would rape her. It was meant, for some reason, to occur. Perhaps the essence of Le Tenia’s moral character
-- outside of the confines of time and cause and effect -- is one of brutality
and sadism. Besides, rape is about power, not about an expression of sexual desire.

Irreversible attempts to embody Dunne's ideas about non-linear time through several unique applications of film grammar. First, there’s the reversed flow of time,
told in long, sustained passages (with few or no cuts). Each passage feels like a distinct and separate moment of time, connected tenuously to what comes next, and what comes before.And secondly, the camera seems untethered
from gravity itself, especially as the film opens and “revenge” is meted. The camera literally sways and swoops, turns and rolls, never able to steady or anchor itself in a single place or angle. For the first several moments, this technique
is extremely upsetting, disorienting and perhaps, for some viewers, even
deal-breaking. But if you stick with the
film (as I recommend you should), you begin to get the feeling that the
untethered camera is expressing this idea of spinning through space, without
the natural laws we take for granted.
In other words, gravity fails us, visually-speaking, because our
concepts of time, are, similarly, failures in terms of understanding the movie. The world's nature is not as we perceive it.

The
film’s music also plays a significant role in fashioning the overall tapestry of
Irreversible. Beethoven’s (1770 – 1872)
7th Symphony is played at crucial points, and it is a composition notorious
for its sense of spontaneity. Some, in
fact, call the 7th Symphony an embodiment of madness. Spontaneity and madness exist, again, only if
man exists in linear time; if the past, present and future don’t co-exist
simultaneously. In other words, there can be no
spontaneity (or rage, impulse, or madness, vis-à-vis Pierre and his brutal
behavior...), if the shape and dimension of time is already diagrammed. The 7th Symphony supports our
(wrong-headed) idea that time is linear, and that we are spontaneous
characters, susceptible to the whims of cause and effect.

Near
Irreversible’s end, the film lingers on that poster of 2001: A Space Odyssey, asking
us to consider “the trip” of this film, and also, deliberately, the meaning of the Star
Child. The film then ends with a
strobing effect, a bizarre montage of indistinct images, and a final fade-to-black. If
time has destroyed everything, as the two strangers suggest, has it also, actually, destroyed the film
itself? Or is the strobe sequence/montage revealing something else entirely. Is the reverse
momentum of the film actually taking us backwards all the way to the Big Bang and the moment of creation -- and therefore time -- itself? It’s a fascinating idea to ponder. When the Big Bang occurred, were all
possibilities, all presents and futures, written in that very instant? Right down to Alex's rape and Pierre's act of murder?

Just
as the Star Child represented the next step in man’s evolution and
understanding of the universe in 2001: A Space Odyssey, director Gasper Noe’s Irreversible tries to push
us to the next (possible) level of human consciousness.
What are we, if untethered from time and space? Are we actually eternal souls, capable of
seeing all beginnings and all endings?
Time may destroy everything, but if the future co-exists with us right
now, right here, then it doesn’t matter. In a sense
we would all be immortal, because all moments exist forever, side-by-side.

Your second key to understanding Irreversible.

And
if that’s the case, shouldn't we really be good and decent to each other? Isn’t that the irrevocable, unalterable, irreversible fact of human life? If we can’t blame spontaneous “bad deeds” or cause and effect for our actions, then what excuse do we have when we behave violently?

Thursday, August 16, 2012

“You have undoubtedly seen
thousands of horror and sci-fi films, you understand the genre, you love the
genre. Do you think you could direct a genre film? If so, horror or sci-fi?

And if horror, what sub-genre of
horror, slasher, haunted house, found-footage, etc? Or considering your love of
both sci-fi and horror, possibly a hybrid of the both such as 'Alien’?

Thank
you for that excellent question, Trent.

I
know from my experience directing episodes of my zero-budget sci-fi/horror web
series, The House Between (2007 – 2009), just how difficult directing
in those genres can be.

Also,
I have interviewed folks in the movie industry who compared directing movies to
being stung by a thousand mosquitoes simultaneously, or, alternatively going to
war as an infantryman.

It’s
not a cake walk. Thus, I have the
utmost respect for directors, because in the filmmaking process -- as I’ve witnessed first-hand -- there are
approximately one million-and-one ways that something can go wrong.Having experienced the process myself, I’m
constantly amazed and impressed that movies so often do turn out brilliant.

Those
facts established, I really loved the directing process, and miss it very much,
since it’s been about three years since I undertook the challenge. If I were a rich man, I’d be making more
seasons of The House Between right now, but it’s an expensive proposition.

Still,
I have written several scripts for low-budget films, including one called The
Dead Side of the Street, which is a kind of 1980s rubber reality horror film…along the lines of Hellraiser or ANightmare
on Elm Street.

But
if I had the opportunity to direct any kind of movie at all, I strongly suspect
I would gravitate towards your last option there: the horror/sci-fi hybrid. I
feel that this was very much what The House Between was (or wanted to
be): a production that kind of skirted the limits of each genre, and could go
either way (into pure sci-fi, or deep into horror).

I
truly love sci-fi/horror hybrid films such as Alien(1979), Event Horizon (1997), Pandorum
(2009) and Prometheus (2012), as well as TV shows that walk the same line,
like
Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977) and Sapphire and Steel (1978 – 1981).

For
some reason, I just really groove on the combination of high-tech environs and
terrifying mystery/horror. I also really
love the found-footage genre, but, honestly, I haven’t found an inventive
found-footage genre hook yet. In that
sub-genre, you must have a really great and original “hook,” and then kind of
re-invent the form each time up at bat.

I
recently began writing a horror web series called The Eclipse that presents
my “unified theory” regarding all the supernatural events/sightings in the
world. I have spoken with my composer
and producer on The House Between, as well as a few others, about crafting a
four-episode first season, but right now it just depends on timing, expense and
a few other issues. For one, I’m still
in a Masters program (until next July…), and for another, I am still trying to
produce the DVD edition of The House Between, which requires
the total re-editing of all twenty-one episodes.

But
I have no doubt that one day I’ll try my hand at directing again, and a
horror/sci-fi combo would indeed be my preference.

Although
this horror film directed by Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni is occasionally
discomforting and even sometimes beautiful in terms of its exterior visuals,
the meandering narrative never comes together in a meaningful or credible way. The amorphous, all-encompassing atmosphere of
dread that is present in the films I mentioned above is entirely absent here. In its place The Fields lunges from
one red herring villain to another, until finally culminating in ambiguous
fashion without settling on what exactly -- if anything -- actually happened, and
who might have committed the pseudo/maybe not-crimes. Since these pressing details are rendered so
incoherently, it’s difficult to draw significant meaning from the film.

“Based on actual events,”The
Fields is set in rural Pennsylvania in the year 1973, as a young boy,
Steven (Joshua Ormand) goes to stay with his elderly grandparents in the
country. At home, his Mom (Tara Reid)
and Dad (Faust Checho) are experiencing relationship difficulties, and it’s
clear that Steven feels isolated and alone.
On the radio, he listens to stories of Charles Manson and his murderous
cult, and Steven’s grandma, Gladys (Cloris Leachman) lives on a steady diet of
late night horror movies.

Then,
over Gladys’ objections, Steven wanders out into the cornfield beyond the
family farm one day and discovers the body of a dead woman. He returns to the corn field over the next several
days, and emerges at Bushkill Park, a weird amusement park where hippies from
California have taken up residence.

By
night, a mysterious shadowy figure grows nearer to Steven -- even calling his name -- and, finally,
one fateful night, the farm comes under siege from unknown invaders…

Joshua
Ormand, the boy who plays Steven in The Fields does a really fine job
here, and that’s significant, because The Fields very much wants to play as a child’s-eye view of the world.
Separated from his parents and feeling alone, Steven starts to detect
horror and fear around every corner.

In
fact, the film makes a case that it is Steven’s loneliness and over-exposure to
the news and to the late night horror films (like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead)
that forges his world of uncertainty, ambiguity and terror. Supporting this theme, there’s a good
composition late in the film of Steven and his grandparents huddled together, their images reflected in the television set,
thus suggesting that the horror is generated there…essentially boxing them in. They are depicted as victims of the media.

I
can’t legitimately argue that the film shouldn’t make any particular argument about
horror films it desires to make, even if I disagree with it. Yet The Fields tries so hard to be a
scary movie itself that its apparent disdain for the genre and its central argument
about the horror genre’s impact on the family plays a little like biting the hand
that feeds it. In other words, you can't complain that horror films are creating an atmosphere of hysteria while you are making a horror film and trying to exploit an atmosphere of hysteria.

Even the
film’s ending -- a dreadfully
unconvincing digital shot that sets up a sequel and suggests that the horror
could return -- is also right out of the horror lexicon playbook, but
not in a good way.

While
the film seeks to blame the family’s media influences for the hysteria and terror it experiences,
The
Fields simultaneously tries to stoke audience fear by focusing on another
scapegoat: evil hippies from California.

The
hippies in the film are menacing and over-the-top, and indeed are meant to be
harbingers of terror. The portrayal of
these characters is not only cartoonish, but ridiculous. Manson and his hippie family were nut-cases,
to be certain, but mostly the hippie culture was concerned with love and peace.
To depict hippies -- as a group -- as craven, insane
murderers is to delve wholly into stereotypes, essentially blaming an
entire cultural movement for the actions of a few psychotics. It’s not particularly pretty, and every time the
film’s characters stop to talk about “those
goddamned hippies,” (direct quote), you think at first that you’re lapsing
into a South
Park or King of the Hill-type satire.
Only the movie apparently means it.
Those “goddamned hippies”… “the whole country is going to hell.” A variation of that line is spoken twice in
the film, and not offered in any kind of ironic sense.

The
Fields also
seems to ascribe the malevolent hippies with near miraculous supernatural
powers, since they can move about with impunity (and near-invisibility) on the
family farm. They even slip into Steven’s
bedroom, and then, later, imperil the family dogs.

Beyond
these issues -- which stretch the film’s already tenuous credibility -- The Fields boasts other problems. For one, claims that the story is based on “actual events” represent near or total
hucksterism. The claim is not designed ironically
(as in the case of Return of the Living Dead [1985] for instance). Nor does it genuflect to a truly dramatic
case from history, like, for example, the crime spree of Ed Gein (the source inspiration
for The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre).

If
you sift through the film’s special features – a use of time I wouldn’t recommend -- you come to realize that
the actual events depicted by The Fields were, simply, this: Some
guy in a truck drove through a family’s front yard in the middle of the night
with his lights on, making a ruckus and waking everyone up. Everything
is spun from that very, very modest occurrence.

Listen, I
don’t enjoy writing negative reviews, and, in fact, I rarely highlight movies
that I don’t like here on the blog.

But I do think it’s important to write
about less-than-successful film occasionally, just as a reminder of how difficult
it is to make a low-budget film as good, as accomplished as Dawning,
Absentia or Intruders.

In
terms of The Fields, I do understand that the filmmakers were attempting to
convey the idea of what a frightening grown-up world might look like to a young
child with an over-active imagination.
An alternative film featuring that idea -- and one of breathtaking power -- is The Reflecting Skin
(1990) written and directed by Philip Ridley.

That
film contends with the mysteries and horrors of life, and especially the pain
and alienation associated with the imminent end of childhood. The Reflecting Skin finds a way to consistently craft visuals that reflect the child-like world-view of its lead character, and it does so in a way that is absolutely heart-breaking.

The
Fields is an over-long, meandering journey set in a similar heartland, but lacking that great sense of heart.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

For
Christmas 1978, my parents gave my sister and me an Atari VCS (Video Computer
System), today more commonly-known as the Atari 2600.

I
didn’t know it at the time, but I had entered the video game age.

I
still remember the initial unveiling of this early game system. For some reason, we had Christmas upstairs in
our den (my dad's office) at 7 Clinton Road that year instead of down in the basement family
room as we usually did. And after I opened several Mattel Battlestar Galactica toys and a
stash of Mego Planet of the Apes toys that my parents found at Englishtown
flea market, they pointed me to our beige sofa.

They
told me to look behind it, and there, tucked against the wall was a very large
rectangular box.

My
sister and I pulled out the over-sized box and I still remember our bafflement
at the graphics. What the heck was this thing?

My
parents quickly explained patiently that it was a game you could play “on the
television.” Then we all went downstairs
together, still in our pajamas, and my Dad hooked it up.

The
games I remember having initially were COMBAT
(which came with the system), SPACE
INVADERS, and MISSILE COMMAND. While my Mom went up to the kitchen to fix us
homemade pancakes, my sister and dad and I played Space Invaders…and I was
hooked.

Atari
was still a big thing the next Christmas, in 1980, and I remember getting the ASTEROIDS game, which featured a craft
that like a Buck Rogers star-fighter on the game cartridge art. I also have very fond memories of school afternoons when my Dad would come home from work and meet me in the basement for a round or two of COMBAT. He was good with the tanks (and pong...) but I was good with the planes.

If
memory serves, I was among the first in my neighborhood to own a video game
system, and so our basement family room saw a lot of Atari action for the first
two years or thereabouts. Before long,
my friends bought competing video game systems like Intellivision and
Colecovision, and the luster of the Atari wore off a bit. Our family updated at some point to the Atari
5200, and then quickly to an Atari 400 computer. Then we got an Atari 800. So between the time that I was ten to the
time I left for college, we had an Atari system of some type in the house.

When
I did go away to school in fall of 1988, we probably still had sixty or so
games (some from Activision) for the Atari 2600, but I rarely played it anymore.
Then, about seven years ago, in 2005, my
parents found one for me at a yard sale here in Charlotte --- still in its box
and un-played with -- for five dollars. Boy
was that a great discovery.

The Atari Video Computer System box reads:

“Atari brings a powerful computer
to your home television. This system
allows you to build a Game Library with additional Game Programs and
controllers.

The Atari Video Computer System
Includes:

Video Computer System Console

2 Sets of Controllers

COMBAT Game Program including 27
action-packed game variations.

TV/Game Switch Box

AC Power Supply.”

Today
our culture has moved far past Atari in terms of home game systems, to be
certain, but occasionally Joel still asks me to bring out the old “Atari,” and
give some of those primitive games a whirl.

He
has asked me a bit less of late, in part because Roku offers some of the same games
-- like PAC-MAN and Galaga -- and
the controllers for that system are much easier for him to manipulate. Also, he’s begun to get into Playstation 2
games including Madagascar and Ben 10.

That
said, Atari is still the only platform we own that allows Joel to play MISSILE COMMAND. He loves that game because he loves to see
the world get wiped out in a (strobing) nuclear explosion when he loses. Crazy kid…

Below
are some commercials from the 1970s for the Atari Video Computer System. This is one great toy from the 1970s that
lived up to the advertising: “More Games –
More Fun.”

I
recently featured “Dingbot” -- a Tomy
Robot from the year 1984 -- as my collectible of the week here on the blog. Today, I want to highlight one of his (two) counterparts,
namely Verbot: “The programmable robot!”

Verbot
was also manufactured by Tomy Corp. in 1984, and he “performs eight functions by remote control. Your VOICE is his command.”

The
instructions on this robot’s box note that a child can: “program Verbot to respond to your own secret commands through his
remote control microphone. He will move
forward and back, turn left or right, pick up and deliver objects, blink and
smile, all at the sound of your voice.”

A
further tally of Verbot’s abilities includes:

“8 command memory.
Program each command with your own secret code word.”

“Dazzling
personality. He’ll blink and smile at your request.”

“Forward and
reverse! Direct his movement.”

“Turn right and
turn left. Verbot goes in any direction.

“Pick up and deliver objects! Train Verbot to be your
mechanical messenger.”

“Wireless remote
control unit! Control him from a distance!”

While
Tomy suggested “The future is here – Home
entertainment robots!,” I’m not certain how much these robots actually
caught on with kids or the public, but I still enjoy the (admittedly)
antiquated design of the Verbot. He’s
half R2-D2, half Robby, I suppose you might say. The
only one of these Tomy toys I don’t currently have in my collection is the
gigantic mega-bot, Omnibot…

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

“For those aspiring writers out there, like myself, would you
be able to give a run-down as to what the process is, from pitching to publication,
for a reference book such as the ones you've written?

“Be as brief or extensive as you wish. As a side-question,
what do you consider to be important things for aspiring writers to keep in
mind about this type of expenditure? “

Jose,
that’s a great and important question, and one I’m very happy to answer. I should hasten to add that the information I
share here is a product of my specific and unique experience.

Other
writers may feel differently, based on their experiences, and that’s perfectly
okay.

Starting
Out:

In
terms of the process you inquire about, it all begins with your passion.

Find
a topic you wish to cover fully in terms of your reference book (a TV series, a
director, a grouping of films, and so forth), and then think seriously about
how your book should be organized, and what kind of materials you wish to include.

When
you start to strategize your book, think seriously about your niche. What
makes you the right person to write this particular book?? In other words, what’s your approach and how
does it distinguish you?

For
example, I see myself as a cultural theorist with a fluency in film grammar, and
as a critic who has a specific view about what represents quality in film (my
frequent “form must reflect content” edict). At this point, I also know myself and my proclivities: I prefer
writing laudatory reviews than witty cut-downs, or negative reviews.

The
point is, find the approach that works for you. There are Marxist critics,
feminist critics, snarky critics, you name it.
So pinpoint an approach that is brand-able for you and leverage that approach to the fullest. Make certain that approach is one that fully and uniquely illuminates your subject matter.

As
far as expenditures, you will want to consider including photographs and
perhaps other materials too. This is trickier than it sounds. Purchasing photographs from professional
sellers can be prohibitively expensive, and you must also consider trademark
and copyright issues.

For
my early books with McFarland – a wonderful
publisher, I should add -- I commissioned an artist to draw original illustrations. I also purchased the rights fromThe New York Times to re-publish
Isaac Asimov’s review of Space: 1999 in my book on that particular series. So have a vision
for what you want your book to look
like, and also for what you can afford, and what the publisher will accept.

Pitching
and writing:

After
determining what you wish to include in your book, write a sample chapter, a
table of contents, and a kind of “brief” or “overview” about what the book concerns.

You
may want to include a page on how to market the book as well, noting specifically
what kind of competition exists. Be sure
to name other successful books on related (but not identical) topics.

I
am lucky enough to have a great literary agent to help me get a foot in the
door with publishers, and this is the approach we always use for pitching. It
has served us well for probably ten-to-twelve projects now.

But
if you do not have an agent, don’t fret. Conduct some extensive research yourself and
select (from a guide to book publishers) five
publishing houses that accept non-agented material and which you believe might
want to release your book. Choose wisely and judiciously, and send those houses
a very concise query letter, along with
your sample chapter and proposal.

In
these times, releasing your own e-book is also a real possibility, and a good
avenue to see your work published. But it’s not one I unhesitatingly recommend
for first-time writers because e-books don’t generally have editors looking
over a writer’s shoulder. And honestly, it’s helpful for someone to back-stop
you.

Writers
are human beings, and like all human beings, are imperfect. I know that I get bleary-eyed when I’ve gone
over a book one too many times in an evening.
In that wonked-out state, it is so easy to miss a typo or a grammatical
error.

So
editing can sometimes be a painful task. But in the long run, I’ve always been
grateful to have another set of eyes looking over my books.If you
do go the e-publishing route, find someone you trust to proofread the text for
you.

When
you find a publisher who is interested in your book, the house will usually
provide you a word limit, a photo limit, a deadline, and perhaps even a format
guide. Then the publisher will send you
a contract with either an advance, or an agreement/schedule for royalties once
sales commence.

Sign
the contract, then, just have a good time.
Write the best, most creative book you can within the time you have allotted.

I
still find that particular experience…thrilling.

A
note of caution: If you hope to work with the publishing house again, however, don’t
miss the deadline, no matter the circumstances.
Some writers believe that no deadline is ever truly dead, but I don’t
subscribe to that theory. Above all, a writer must learn discipline. And that includes the discipline to know when
a work of art is complete, or should be complete. Obsessive tendencies are not necessarily the
friend of a professional writer.

So,
if you get to choose your own deadline, I recommend following Mr. Scott’s
lead. You don’t need to multiply your
deadline estimates by a factor of four, but if you have the option, build-in an
added two months just for safety. Perhaps that will give you the time to nab one
final interviewee, or polish your work one more time.

Contrarily,
if you don’t need the extra time, turn your book in early…and the publisher
will think you’re the most amazing and committed writer on the planet. Seriously.

Expectations:

During
this entire process, I hasten to add, it’s important to keep your expectations
in check.

Advances,
especially post-Recession tend to be lower than they used to be, and in terms
of royalties, the general rule is that you get 10% of the net. Notice I said net,
not gross, meaning that many publishers subtract almost a third from that ten percent in case there are significant book
returns.

Again,
I’m writing specifically about non-fiction reference books here. If you were to
write a tie-in novel for a franchise, for instance, they are generally
work-for-hire assignments. You are paid a set fee,
and that’s that.

So,
in other words, your book isn’t going to get you rich fast, or perhaps, ever,
unless you are very, very lucky.

But
if you love writing and you love your subject matter, the name of the game isn’t
necessarily to get rich. Each book is a
building block in a larger professional career, and that’s how I suggest people
view it. .

After
writing:

About
six months after you turn in your manuscript to the publisher, you will get
page proofs which you need to pore over with meticulous detail. Nowadays, this is largely done with a PDF
file instead of an actual manuscript and galleys. Turnaround
is usually quick, and there is no opportunity here to really re-write your work.So be satisfied, up front, that you’ve said
what you want to say in the way you want to say it.

While
proofing, you also compile an index and make certain you have written short,
punchy captions for your photographs.
Some publishers give you two bites at the apple here, so-to-speak,
providing preliminary proofs and final
proofs. Some don’t.

Also,
be aware that you don’t set the price of your book, or, usually, have a word in
selecting cover images. I always find it
amusing when a reviewer complains about the prices of my books…as if I
personally have something to do with setting them.

No
writer that I know of gets that particular perk.

Marketing

Once
you’ve finished proofing and the book is at the printers, one of your most
important jobs begins: marketing.

Some
publishers boast really great sales and marketing people -- ones who are really
on the ball, and work with you to create videos, blogs, podcasts, and so
forth. This is the case, definitely,
with Hal Leonard, publisher of my Purple Rain, Kevin Smith, and Spinal
Tap books.

Other
publishers aren’t so good with this aspect of the business.

The
bottom line is that if you want your book to make a successful debut, you should
work hand-in-glove with the publisher, and also, where possible, spearhead your
own initiatives (tweeting, blogging, Facebook, etc.).

When
I began my writing career in 1997, I had no idea how to do any of this. None. Zip.

The
Internet was still a relatively new thing back then, at least to me. In 2011, I enrolled in a graduate program in
communications, in part to help me better understand social media, mass communication
channels and the like. I don’t consider
this a necessity, obviously, for all writers…but it helps. I got to the point where I felt like I was
making a lot of mistakes in the so-called “branding” process -- and embarrassing
ones at that -- so I felt it necessary to formalize my education.

Your
mileage will vary, obviously. Marketing
comes naturally to some writers, and not to others. It's not my favorite part of the process.

Reception:
Once you have become a published author…

In
terms of aspiring writers, I will reiterate how important it is to manage
expectations. Writing reference books isn’t necessarily the short-cut to fame
and glory. If you want to write these
books, do it because you believe you have something important or interesting to
add to the conversation, and because you love the act of writing.

Finally,
in terms of reception, be prepared for the dreaded “gatekeeper factor.” In some cases, the folks who will be
reviewing your book are the very ones who secretly -- or not so secretly -- think they could have done a better job than
you, and should have been given the assignment in your place. They want to keep you down and out -- far away from success -- so they can “sneak
in."

To
wit, I remember one guy trashing my Blake’s 7 book on a web site a few
years back. He noted that he had been
trying to get a book published for years
and couldn’t understand why my book had been published, not his. That inadvertent
admission revealed his hand, and the bias behind his assessment. Watch out for these gatekeepers, but also
expect that they are going to be there, waiting to take you down, lest you – gasp! – eclipse them.

In
terms of your book’s reception, learn to distinguish between genuine and
detailed (and thus helpful) criticism, and a hit-piece. You’ll sleep a lot better at night once you
can separate the gatekeeper reviews from the ones that really engage with your
books, and draw critical responses based on your arguments or writing

What
I’m saying, finally is this: Write the
book you want to read, learn from the editing process, don’t expect to get rich
quick, and then be prepared to have a thick skin when the book comes out.

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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What the Critics Say...

"...some of the best writing about the genre has been done by John Kenneth Muir. I am particularly grateful to him for the time and attention he's paid to things others have overlooked, under-appreciated and often written off. His is a fan's perspective first, but with a critic's eye to theme and underscore, to influence and pastiche..." - Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, in the foreword to Horror Films FAQ (October 2013).

"Hands down, John Kenneth Muir is one of the finest critics and writers working today. His deep analysis of contemporary American culture is always illuminating and insightful. John's film writing and criticism is outstanding and a great place to start for any budding writer, but one should also examine his work on comic books, TV, and music. His weighty catalog of books and essays combined with his significant blog production places him at the top of pop culture writers. Johns work is essential in understanding the centrality of culture in modern society." - Professor Bob Batchelor, cultural historian and Executive Director of the James Pedas Communication Center at Thiel College (2014).

"...an independent film scholar, [Muir] explains film studies concepts in a language that is reader-friendly and engaging..." (The Hindu, 2007)"...Muir's genius lies in his giving context to the films..." (Choice, 2007)